Undercover Investigations

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Earlier this month, the District Court for the Central District of California imposed a prison sentence of one year and a day, with three years of supervised release, on defendant Theresa Lynn Tetley, who had pleaded guilty to: (i) the unlicensed operation of a digital currency exchange due to failure register with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”), in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1960(a) and (b)(1)(B), and (ii) a money laundering charge, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1956(a)(3)(B), arising out of an undercover “sting” operation run by the Drug Enforcement Agency and Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation involving the attempt to conceal proceeds supposedly obtained by selling drugs.  Tetley also was ordered to pay a $20,000 fine and forfeit 40 Bitcoin, $292,264 in cash, and 25 gold bars that were the alleged proceeds of her illegal activity.

The Court imposed a sentence significantly lower than the sentence of 30 months requested by the government, a recommendation which already was lower than the advisory sentencing range recommended by the Federal Sentencing Guidelines (“Guidelines”) of 46 to 57 months in prison, as calculated by the U.S. Probation Office.

Tetley, a 50 year old woman living in Southern California, is a former stockbroker and real estate investor. She operated her digital currency exchange under the alias “Bitcoin Maven” for over three years, running an unregistered Bitcoin for cash exchange service.  According to the government, her service “fueled a black-market financial system” that “purposely and deliberately existed outside the regulated bank industry” and which catered to an alleged major darknet vendor of illegal narcotics.  According to the defense, however, the defendant “departed from a lifetime of integrity and good deeds and showed terrible judgment by failing to comply with federal registration requirements and buying bitcoins from individuals who represented themselves as engaged in criminal activity.”

In this post, we will drill into this sentencing and the parties’ respective positions, which provide a window into the prosecution and sentencing of alleged crimes involving both digital currency and undercover money laundering operations — and into the process for the sentencing of federal crimes in general, and how other factors which are entirely unrelated to the facts of the specific offense can be important.  Further, the Tetley case is interesting in part because it represents a sort of “hybrid” case — seen from time to time in money laundering cases involving professionals — which straddles both the typically very different realms of “pure” financial crime cases and illegal narcotics cases.  The government sentencing memorandum is here; the defense sentencing memorandum is here.
Continue Reading  Unlicensed Bit Coin Exchange Operator Sentenced to One Year and a Day for Attempted Money Laundering in Undercover Sting Operation and Failure to Register with FinCEN

A Guest Blog by Bruce Zagaris, Esq.

Today we are very pleased to welcome guest blogger Bruce Zagaris, who is a Partner at the Washington, D.C. law firm of Berliner, Corcoran & Rowe.  He is the editor of the International Enforcement Law Reporter; the author of International White Collar Crime: Cases and Materials; and an Adjunct Professor at the Texas A & M University School of  Law.  Mr. Zagaris also is a member of the Task Force on the Gatekeeper and the Profession of the American Bar Association (“ABA”).

As Mr. Zagaris explains immediately below, growing international trends have led the ABA Task Force to consider a new Model Rule of Professional Conduct that would impose basic “client due diligence” requirements on U.S. lawyers to determine whether their clients are engaging in money laundering or terrorist financing.  This development relates directly to issues about which we previously have blogged, including European perceptions of lawyers as potential gatekeepers and of the United States as a haven for money laundering and tax evasion.  The possible new Model Rule potentially would represent a significant shift in how the U.S. legal profession regards itself and its relationship to its clients.  We hope that you enjoy this discussion by Mr. Zagaris of these important issues. -Peter Hardy

Increasingly, international bodies are calling for higher standards for gatekeepers, known in the parlance of the Financial Action Task Force (“FATF”) as “designated non-financial businesses and professions” (“DNFBPs”). DNFBPs include lawyers, accountants, real estate agents, and trust and company service providers (other than trust companies).  In particular, in the United States, lawyers play a key role in areas that give rise to potential money laundering:  company formation; real estate transactions; business planning; tax planning; wealth management; trust and estate work; and formation and operation of charities, including transnational philanthropy.

In 2006 and again in 2016, the FATF, an intergovernmental body in charge of making and overseeing compliance with international money laundering standards, performed Mutual Evaluation Reports (“MERs”) to assess compliance by the United States with international standards.  While the FATF gave the U.S. high marks generally, both MERs found the U.S. “non-compliant” in gatekeepers and entity transparency.

As a result of this international trend, the ABA’s Task Force on the Gatekeeper and the Profession has prepared and discussed a new ABA Model Rule of Professional Conduct that would impose basic “client due diligence” requirement on lawyers.  We discuss this potential new model rule, and the developments which have led to its consideration, below.  Clearly, due diligence for lawyers will increasingly be on the radars of banks, financial institutions, and law firms.
Continue Reading  AML Due Diligence Standards for U.S. Lawyers

The District Court for the Eastern District of New York has denied motions for acquittal and new trial by a Florida attorney convicted at trial of assisting in an undercover money laundering “sting” operation.

Although the sting operation was orchestrated by an undercover FBI agent, it was modeled on a similar, uncharged and actual scheme to launder the proceeds of fake stock certificates in which the attorney allegedly had participated previously, and which had been run by the defendant’s former client – who introduced the attorney to the undercover FBI agent.  As is typical for money laundering prosecutions of third-party professionals, the key issue was knowledge.
Continue Reading  “Sting” Money Laundering Scheme and Cooperating Client Ensnares Attorney

The U.S. money laundering statutes have a broad global reach and may be used to prosecute cases involving alleged schemes perpetrated almost entirely outside of the United States. These types of allegations seem to be an increasingly common fact pattern as cross-border cases proliferate and U.S. prosecutions more often involve conduct occurring largely overseas. A recent indictment fits squarely within this trend.

GlobeThe U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) recently announced the unsealing of four related and complex indictments returned in the District of Columbia; according to the DOJ press release, 19 people were charged “with taking part in various international fraud and money laundering conspiracies that led to more than $13 million in losses[.]” The press release credited a broad array of law enforcement agencies, including Interpol. Again emphasizing the international aspect of the indictments, the press release stated that “[s]ixteen of the 19 defendants were arrested . . . . in New York and Los Angeles, as well as Hungary, Bulgaria, Germany, and Israel[,]” and that “[t]he arrests followed a multi-year investigative effort by federal and international law enforcement agencies to target multimillion-dollar fraud and money laundering schemes perpetrated by a transnational organized crime network.”

The four indictments are lengthy and we will discuss only one of them, in order to focus on the potentially broad jurisdictional reach of the “international” money laundering provision under 18 U.S.C. § 1956(a)(2).
Continue Reading  Indictments Spotlight Broad Extraterritorial Reach of U.S. Money Laundering Statutes